The first completed manuscript of 'The Road to Isengard' was originally continuous with Chapter XXVIII 'The Battle of Helm's Deep' (the original title), but I think that the division was introduced at a fairly early stage, with a new chapter numbered XXIX beginning with the meeting of Gandalf and Théoden beside the Deeping Stream after the Battle of the Hornburg. The first completed manuscript of XXIX, of which the original title was 'To Isengard', ran on without break through the later 'Flotsam and Jetsam' and 'The Voice of Saruman', but a division between XXIX and XXX ('Flotsam and Jetsam') was made before it was completed: XXX then included the later 'Voice of Saruman' as well. A very rough and difficult outline for this part of the story in fact begins at the end of 'The Road to Isengard', and the chapter was then expressly to end with the return to Eodoras.
Gandalf asks where Treebeard is?
(Guarding Orthanc, says Merry. Some Ents still demolishing.)
He takes Théoden off.
Aragorn takes the hobbits aside and they sit and eat and chat
on the stone heaps. Aragorn smokes. Talk about wizards and tobacco.
Aragorn and Gimli are told about Orc-raid and Treebeard. Merry gives up hope of describing them; says you will see them soon. How shall I describe them to Bilbo? (This was when he first tried to collect his ideas.)
Describes destruction of Isengard. Saruman not strong or brave. Merry tells all he knows about the battles of Ford. How trees dogged orcs.
Treebeard knocks on gates of Isengard. Arrows no good.(1) Saruman flies to Orthanc and sends up fires from floor of plain. Scorched Ents go mad. But Treebeard stops them. They let in Isen River by North Gate (2) and flood the bowl. Terrific fume and steam. Terrible noises, drowned wolves and slaves and smiths. The Ents pull the wall to pieces. They send Galbedirs (Talking Trees) to help Gandalf. They bury dead at Fords.
Gandalf's speech with Saruman. He rides over flooded causeway. Saruman looks out of window above door. Asks how he dares to come without permission. Gandalf says he thought that as far as Saruman was concerned he was still a lodger in Orthanc.(3)
'Guests that leave from the roof have not always a claim to come in by the door.' Saruman refuses to repent or submit.
Gandalf gives Treebeard task of [?caring] for him. 'I do not doubt there are delved ways under Orthanc. But every time water subsides let it in again, till all these underground places are submerged. Then make a low bank and plant trees round it. Guard Orthanc with Ents.'
Théoden thinks a Nazgûl may carry him off. 'Let him!' says Gandalf. 'If Saruman thinks of that last treachery ... cannot pity him for the terrible fate that awaits him. Mordor can have no love [for] him. Indeed what he will do
Say that this must be clear to Saruman himself. Would it not be more dramatic to [?make] Saruman offer help: Gandalf says no - he knows that if Mordor wins he is done for now. Even the evidence that he had made war on us won't help him. Sauron knows that he did so only for [his] own ends. But if we win - with his belated help he hopes to re-establish himself and escape punishment. Gandalf demands his staff of office. He refuses; then Gandalf orders him to be shut up, as above.(4)
They rest the night in the ruins and ride back to Eodoras.
Feast on evening of their return and coming of the messenger - that ominous dark-visaged man (5) should end this chapter.
Another outline (in ink over pencil, but the underlying text though briefer was not greatly different) reads as follows:
Treebeard (and Merry and Pippin) relate events - their arrival at Isengard. They saw Saruman send out all his forces to overwhelm the Riders at Isenford. As soon as Isengard was well-nigh empty, the Ents attacked. Merry and Pippin tell of the terrifying anger and strength of the Ents. Saruman really had little power beyond cunning, persuasive words - when he had no slaves at hand to do his will and work his machines or light his fires he could do little himself. All his studies had been given to trying to discover how rings were made. He let his wolves out - but they were useless. A few of the Ents were scorched with fire - then they went mad. They drowned Isengard, by letting in River and blocking the outlet.
All the day they were destroying and making havoc of the outer walls and all within. Only Orthanc resisted them. Then just ere nightfall Gandalf came riding up like the wind.(6) He told them of King Théoden's danger. A considerable force of walking trees had already stalked after the orcs the night before. The Ents now sent a much great[er] force and commanded them all to gather at the mouth of the Coomb and let no orc come out alive. A few Ents had gone to Isenford, and buried the dead men of the Mark.
In the margin against the last sentences of this outline is written: 'Shall there be more real Ents?' Notably, a sentence in the underlying pencilled text reads: 'The Ents sent a force of walking trees (with split trunks). They crept on in darkness following the victorious orcs.'
There is not a great deal to notice in the scanty initial drafting or in the first completed manuscript as far as the beginning of Merry's story of the attack on Isengard (TT p. 170). The meal provided by the hobbits was not eaten in the guard-house by the gates: Merry and Pippin went off to get the food and returned with it, Pippin explaining that 'There is a door not far inside the old tunnel that leads down into some well-stocked stores' (cf. the outline, p. 47: they sit and eat 'on the stone heaps'). Of Ents, where in TT (p. 167) Pippin says: 'Oh, well, you have seen some at a distance, already', here he says 'Oh well, you have seen Quickbeam' - this being of course a reference to the earlier version of 'The Road to Isengard', where Gandalf and Théoden and their company met Bregalad on their ride from Helm's Deep.(7) And he says also, as in the outline on p. 47: 'But I wish Bilbo could have seen Treebeard: how we shall manage to describe him to the old hobbit, if ever we get back, I can't think.'
In a draft for the discussion of pipes (TT pp. 167-8) Aragorn leapt down from the stone heap and went to the saddle-bags that lay nearby. 'From them he drew out an old cloak, and a worn purse of soft hide. Coming back he wrapped himself in the cloak, and opened the purse, and drew out a blackened pipe of clay.' Before Pippin produced his spare pipe, Merry said: 'There are none to be found. Orcs don't smoke, and Saruman did not give his leaf to his slaves.' And when Pippin said 'Look! Trotter the Ranger has come back!' Aragorn replied: 'He has never been away. I am Trotter and Aragorn, and belong both to Gondor and the North.'(8)
A few other details in the opening of the chapter may be noted. There is no mention of Aragorn's returning of the hobbits' knives,(9) or of Pippin's brooch (TT p. 169). After Merry's story of Grishnákh (10) Aragorn spoke at greater length about Sauron and Saruman:
'All this about the orcs of Lugburz (Mordor, I suppose, from the Red Eye) makes me uneasy,' said Aragorn. 'The Dark Lord already knew too much, and Grishnákh clearly got some message across the River after the quarrel. [But still there are some hopeful points. Saruman is in a cleft stick of his own cutting. Gandalf ought not to have much difficulty in convincing him that a victory for Mordor would not be pleasant for him, now. Indeed' (and here Aragorn lowered his voice) 'I do not see what can save him, except the Ring itself. It is well that he has no idea where it is. And we should do best never to mention it aloud: I do not know what powers Saruman in his tower may have, nor what means of communication with the East there may be.) From your tale it is plain that he thought one of you was possibly the Ringbearer; and Sauron must therefore have the same doubt. If so, it will hasten his attack westward: Isengard has fallen none too soon. But there are some hopeful points. All this doubt may help poor Frodo and Sam. But at any rate Saruman is in a cleft stick of his own cutting.
The part of this text (rather more confused in the manuscript than I have represented it) enclosed in square brackets, was rejected immediately and replaced by what follows ('From your tale it is plain ...'); this was rejected later, leaving only the last sentence. - Lastly, Pippin chants, in addition to Though Isengard be strong and barred [sic], the Entish Ta-ruta, dum-da, dum-da dum! ta-rara dumda dumda-bum! (see VII.420).
In the original draft Merry's story (TT pp. 170 ff.) was at first very different from what it became, and I give this text (written in ink over very faint pencil) in part. Of the opening of his story my father noted on the manuscript that he should know less: 'His account of the war is too detailed.'
'... We came down over the last ridge into Nan Gurunir after night had fallen. It was then that I first got an inkling that the forest was moving behind - or a lot of it was: all the Galbedirs [> Lamorni > Ornómar] were coming, as the Ents call them in their short language (which seems to be an oldfashioned Elvish): Talking Trees, that is, that they have trained and made half- entish.(11) All this must have been happening while you were riding south.(12) As far as I can make out, from Treebeard and Gandalf, the war seems to have gone like this: Saruman opened the game some weeks ago, and sent raiders into the west of Rohan. The Rohan-men sent out strong forces, and they retreated over the fords of Isen, and the Riders rather rashly pursued them right up to the bottom of Nan Gurunir. There they were ambushed by a host of Saruman's folk and one of the chieftains of Rohan seems to have been killed. That must be a good many days ago.(13) Then more Rohan-men arrived coming from Westfold (14) away south, and the Riders still remained on both sides of the River keeping the Isengarders from breaking out of the valley. Up to then Saruman was only fencing; then he struck. Men came up from the land away west, old enemies of Rohan, and the Riders were driven over the Fords. The next stage we were just in time to see.
'As we crept down into Nan-Gurunir - and there was no sign or challenge. [sic] Those Ents and their flocks can creep if they wish. You stand still, looking at the weather and listening to the rustling of the leaves, maybe, and then suddenly you find you are in the middle of a wood, with trees all round you. "Creepy" is the word for it! It was very dark, a cloudy night. The moon got up late - and long before it rose there was a deep and sombre forest all round the upper half of Isengard Ring without a sign of challenge. There was a light gleaming from one of the windows in the tower, that was all. Treebeard and some of the elder Ents crept on, right round to within sight of the gates. We were with him. I was sitting on Treebeard's shoulder and could feel a trembling tenseness in him, but even when roused the Ents can be very cautious and patient: they stood still as statues, listening and breathing. Then all at once there was a great stir. Trumpets blared, and all the Ring echoed. We thought that we had been spotted, and battle was going to begin. But nothing of the kind. It seems that news had come in that the Riders had been defeated and driven over the Fords, but were still trying to hold out on the east bank. Saruman sent out his whole forces: he pretty well emptied Isengard. Gandalf says that he was probably in a great taking, thinking that the Ring might have gone to Eodoras, and meant to blot out Théoden and all his folk, before they had time to do anything about it. But there were one or two bits of essential information he lacked: the return of Gandalf, and the rising of the Ents. He thought the one was finished for good, and the others no good, old slow-witted back-numbers. Two very bad mistakes. Anyway that is what he did. I saw them go - endless lines of Orcs, and squadrons/ troops of them mounted on great wolves (a Saruman notion?), and whole regiments of men, too. Many of them carried torches, and by the flame I could see their faces. Some were just Men, rather tall, dark-haired, not particularly evil-looking.'
'Those would be Dunlanders,' said Aragorn. 'An upland folk from the west of the Misty Mountains, remnants of the old peoples that once dwelt in Rohan and all about the Black Mountains, south and north.'
The following dialogue, concerning the 'goblin-men' reminiscent of the squint-eyed Southerner at Bree, and Merry's estimate of the forces that left Isengard that night, is much the same as in TT (p. 171), except that Aragorn says that they had had many of the goblin-men to deal with at the Hornburg 'last night' (see note 7), and that there is here no mention of the bridge over the Isen over which a part of the host had passed. Then follows:
'... I thought it looked black for the Riddermark. But it seems in the end the only way in which Saruman could have been overcome. One wonders how much Gandalf knew, guessed, or planned. But Treebeard anyway let them go. He said that his concern was Isengard. "Stone - that we can fight," he said.
'But he sent off a whole wood of the Ornómi (15) down the valley after the army, as soon as the gates of Isengard were shut again. I don't know, of course, much of what happened away south down there; but you will tell us later.'
'I can tell you now briefly,' said Aragorn. 'The Saruman army came down on both sides of the Isen and overwhelmed the men of Rohan, and most of the survivors scattered. A strong force under Erkenwald of Westfold (16) fled south towards the Black Mountains. We met a survivor of the battles of the fords yesterday evening, and were just in time to take refuge in Helm's Deep, a gorge in the hills, before the whole pack came on us.'
'I don't know how you survived,' said Merry. 'But you helped us. As soon as all the army had gone, the fun began here. Treebeard went up and began hammering on the gates....'
Merry's account of the Ents' destruction of the gates of Isengard was already in this preliminary draft very close to that in TT (p. 172), but his estimate of Saruman was expressed more largely and with a degree of scornful and rather jaunty assurance that his experience of the master of Orthanc scarcely justified; and Aragorn does not here interrupt him with a more cautious view of Saruman's innate power (indeed the hypnotic potency of the wizard's voice only emerged, or was at any rate only fully realised, when the meeting with him came to be written).
'I don't know what Saruman thought was happening. But all that I have seen since leads me to think that either he was never really a first-class wizard (not up to his reputation, which was partly due to Isengard, and that was not his making to begin with), or he had been deteriorating - relying on wheels and what not, and not on wisdom. And he does not seem to have much heart in any sense: certainly he had been going back in plain courage. The old fool had really become dependent on all his organized slaves. He had a daunting way with him: power of dominating minds and bewildering or persuading them was his chief asset all along, I fancy. But without his armies to do as he commanded, he was just a cunning old man, very slippery, but with no grit. And the old fool had sent all his armies off! ...'
Merry's account (given to Pippin in TT) of Saruman's flight into Orthanc chased by Bregalad, the spouting of fires and gases from vents in the plain of Isengard ('as soon as Saruman got back into his control-room he got some of his machinery working'), the scorching of some of the Ents and the quelling of their fury by Treebeard, is present in the draft in all essentials, though more briefly told (and the horrible fate of the Ent Beechbone does not yet appear). The time- scheme was still at the stage described in $ II on p. 5, with the drowning of Isengard beginning later in the same night (31 January) as the Ents came there,(17) and so the story is much condensed in the draft text by comparison with that in TT. Gandalf came to Isengard 'yesterday at 'nightfall' (i.e. 1 February, the night of the Battle of the Hornburg); and where in TT (p. 175) Pippin says that he was surprised at the meeting of Gandalf and Treebeard 'because neither of them seemed surprised at all', here Merry says:
'... I do not know who was most surprised at their meeting, Gandalf or Treebeard. Gandalf, I think, for once. For from a look he gave us when we first met I have a fancy Treebeard had spotted Gandalf in Fangorn; but would not say anything even to comfort us. He has very much to heart the elvish saw of Gildor's: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards; for they are subtle and quick to wrath.'(18)
'But Gandalf knew Treebeard was on the move,' said Gimli.
'He knew there was going to be an explosion.'
'But not even Gandalf could guess what that was going to be like,' said [Merry >] Pippin. 'It has never happened before. And even wizards know little about Ents. But talking about surprise - we were the surprised ones: coming on top of the astonishing rage of the Ents, Gandalf's arrival was like a thunderclap. We had very little to do, except try and trot ro
und after Treebeard (when he was too busy to carry us) and see the fun. We had a high time for a moment, when we got left alone, and came in front of a rush of some terrified wolves, and we had a brush with two or three stray orcs. [But when Gandalf arrived, I just stood staring with my mouth open, and then I sat down and laughed. >] But when Gandalf's horse came striding up the road, like a flash of silver in the dusk, well, I just gasped, and then I sat down and laughed, and then I wept. And did he say pleased to see you again? No, indeed. He said "Get up, you tom-fool of a Took. Where in the name of wonder in all this mess is Treebeard? Hurry, hurry, hurry, my lad! Don't let your toes grow whiskers." But later he was a bit gentler, after he had seen the old Ent: he seemed very pleased and relieved. He gave us a few minutes of concentrated news, a pat on the head, a sort of hasty blessing, and vanished away south again. We got some more news out of Treebeard after he had gone. But there must be much more to tell. We should have been far more worried and anxious about you, I expect, only it was difficult what with Treebeard and Gandalf to really believe you would come to grief.'
'Yet we nearly did,' said Aragorn. 'Gandalf's plans are risky, and they lead often to a knife-edge. There is great wisdom, forethought and courage in them - but no certainty. You have to do your part as it comes to you; or they would not work.'
'After that, said Merry, 'the Ents just went on and carefully and neatly finished the drowning of Isengard. I don't know what else, do you?'
'Yes,' said Aragorn, 'some went to the Fords to bury the men of Rohan who had fallen there; and to gather all the - what did you say they were called - the Ornómi, the moving woods, to the Deeping Coomb. Aye, that was a wonder and a victory as great as the one here. No orc is left. It was a long night, but the dawn was fair.'
The History of Middle Earth: Volume 8 - The War of the Ring Page 7